The open political discussion thread. Read the first post!

[Bob Dog]

I must take issue with what is a misuse of the term conservative. A true conservative is one who holds closely to traditional held values. A true conservative is slow to change, and questions the new in the light of how it would alter that which has long served our nation and protected our values. In doing so, this protects us from the usurpation of the very bedrock of tradition on which our country is founded. There is much to be said in favor of this. Many times things of great value can be lost in passing fads of political opinion. Conservatism is the political opinion those who have great entitlements, as with person of great wealth, and sometimes those who have little and are afraid of losing what little they have. This can, however, lead to a resistance to change, when change is truly necessary. Dwight Eisenhauer could be considered a true conservative. From Richard Nixon on the Republican presidents have not been truly conservative, but men with self serving agendas primarily directed at keeping the wealthy wealthy and also enhancing the degree of their wealth.

Liberalism is traditionally an openness to change. True liberals wish to alter things that exist, to right inequities and wrongs in the existing system. A true liberal’s goal is not to change the system for the sake of change, but to change the system to that degree which corrects the aforementioned wrongs. I consider Kennedy, and Carter to be true liberals. They wished to change our system mostly to correct grave injustices. Change is often a good and necessary thing, but if used carelessly much can be lost to change. Barak Obama, whom I voted for president, is not a liberal in the traditional sense. He seems to think that change for its own sake is a good thing. I withhold my very humble judgement of him, for after the radical modifications of the Bush administration, a great deal of change is in order.

A radical is a person whose opinions deviates greatly from mainstream opinion and they often are based on a personal agenda.

A reactionary is a political person whose opinions are basically a response to someone else's political opinions. They are not founded in deep thought, or consideration of the long term good of our nation. They are most often emotional in nature and self serving

An extremist is one who takes the point of view as far as possible in the direction of their particular predilection with little regard for the ultimate results that an execution of their point of view into reality.

Radical Reactionary Extremist, not conservative, is the proper category into which to place Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity.